How to sell your brand … when the old stuff doesn’t work anymore

Leave me the F alone

It sounds catchy, doesn’t it? Maybe the title or the picture drew you into clicking on this article and reading its content. Probably by now half of you have pressed the back button. And even less will read this until the end. If my goal was to make you read the entire article, my advertising strategy was a tad off. I caught your attention, but couldn’t convert it into action.

Sadly, this is exactly what is happening today when so many marketers just cannot let go of their old ways. When companies claim they have gone ‘digital’ they really have not. What they have done is to do the same thing they always did, but now using digital channels.

The TV ads are being complemented with YouTube ads, the fliers in the letterbox are now pesky e-mails amounting to spam and telemarketing has been replaced by text messages, or worse, invasion of your social media space.

Here are a few fun facts which I can relate to as a consumer: 86% of viewers skip ads on TV, 85% of skippable ads are skipped on YouTube and 70% of people who stopped going to the cinema mentioned ‘excessive ads’ as one of the top 3 reasons (together with high prices and an underwhelming experience, but more about that later). Most people hate unsolicited mail and making your unsubscribe process intentionally hard doesn’t do you any favours either.

Today people pay money not to see advertising. So why are so many companies still marching forward in complete oblivion? I bought a pair of khakis at Eddie Bauer and was naive enough to give them my e-mail address. Ever since I receive not one, but two, totally uninteresting mails daily that I have attempted to unsubscribe from quite unsuccessfully. The only action they have achieved is that I do not like them anymore and I will most definitely never, ever give them any personal information again. So, that’s a double loss – an upset consumer, and no access to data to learn more about me. I am using Eddie as an example here, and I am sure that most of you have an ‘Eddie’ that pops up uninvited and relentlessly in your inbox or social pages.

How dare they? That’s one of the statements I hear consumers mention most when brands engage in good old ‘push marketing’. How dare they e-mail bomb me? How dare they delay my movie by 40 minutes from the announced time to play a bunch of (mainly car) ads? How dare they tweet me with their stupid offer? How dare they interrupt my favourite show? How dare they ask for feedback?

The only thing that ‘digital’ seems to have achieved for a lot of brands is to become even peskier than before – and that is not good for the consumer, nor for the brand itself. It is quite ironic that a ‘traditional good old marketing campaign’ can reduce your brand equity significantly.

OMG! What now!?

Should we just stop advertising altogether then and save tons of money hoping our brand will somehow grow stratospheric from organic word of mouth (or word of tweet)? I don’t think that’s the right approach either. One of the first myths I always try to dispel is when a brand asks me for help with ‘a digital strategy’. Look around: the world is digital. How long ago since you looked at your smartphone? If you’re not reading this on your smartphone, or tablet, or netbook, or watch … We live in a digital world, like it or not, so we need a strategy – full stop. Digital is simply a means to an end, but not the end in itself. However, it is not that simple … if you look at digital from a socio-cultural point of view – and less a brand/marketing point of view – it has fundamentally changed our society. We can now access information incredibly fast – we can share it – we can comment on it – and all that whilst our attention span has reduced to record lows. We understand the power of ‘viral’ to do great things, or to destroy organisations by exposing one little mishap to a global audience. In this brave new world, there are a few lessons we can learn from some very clever organisations – and for once let’s not get hung up on the traditional trinity: Apple – Google – Amazon. They’re superb no doubt, but not every organisation can hope to morph into something similar, nor should they need to.

Create a club, preferably an exclusive one

Brompton does not make bikes. There, I said it.

Brompton creates stylish transportation solutions for the urban -health and environmentally conscious- professional on the move. What they offer is a flexible way to marry up the convenience of public transport with the pleasure of riding a bike. The steep price point, bespoke designs and accessories have given rise to a cottage industry (the ‘Off Yer Bike’ carrier handle, or the stylish, and very expensive, ‘Ortlieb’ click on bags to name a couple). Brompton riders are part of an exclusive club of people who want to engage in some recreational sport and flexible commuting, without wanting to be associated with the lycra clad mamils (middle aged men in lycra, btw). Brompton doesn’t have to bombard you with e-mails, they don’t play pesky ads on TV, but oh my are they socio-digitally active. The communities of like-minded individuals, male and female, online are but one testament of getting it right.

Now let’s look at another success: ever heard of the cult of Lulu? Lululemon Athletica is not just a brand, it’s not just very expensive yoga-gear, it’s a cult.

To ‘earn’ your Lulu’s you cannot just go to the shop and pay over $100 for a pair, no no no. You must live the Lulu life, which involves exercise, kale and lots of you-time with your likeminded and equally gorgeous friends.

To put it bluntly – and apologies upfront – it’s ok to be fat and wear a set of Nike sweatpants. It is not ok to wear Lulu’s unless you have spent countless hours doing Pilates and Yoga whilst sipping Green Tea and Kale, to get your perfect Lulu-bum.

The appeal is again the exclusivity of the club. You can buy a Luis Vuitton bag and be part of that club with one swipe of your credit card, but to be part of Lulu means extra investment. Like Brompton, digital is used cleverly (Lululemon Diaries) to build on the community and trade tips and tricks for a healthy-happy life, and less about pushing tights.

Goodbye aspiration, hello experience!

Except for parts of the emerging world, aspirational marketing has reached its end point. The days when drinking Johnny Walker meant you had arrived, or driving a Porsche was testament to great personal success have all but disappeared. A few recessions and a bit of a populist rising together with the changed priorities of millennials and gen Z have shifted some of the old truths.

Drinking alcohol? Not that cool anymore. Driving a Porsche? Success or insecurity? It’s far more interesting as a statement to go electrical, as Tesla and BMW are demonstrating quite successfully.

Sticking with BMW – did anyone notice when they stopped advertising individual cars and started to advertise the experience? Today BMW talks about ‘X-drive’ which is available on all BMW cars and which allows you to go off-road and explore or experience new adventures. Where Audi is still pushing cars – Vorsprung durch technic – BMW has moved on. Soon you can share your X-drive adventure via your connected drive with other BMW likeminded owners.

Remember those movie theatres? Not that long ago it was such an aspirational activity to go to the big screen. Today is a horror experience. People of all walks of life munching away ever increasing varieties of food whilst loudly commenting or making phone calls. The cinema business first tried to make up for the loss in seats by compensating with more advertising. When that made attrition even worse, they went for 3D, Real 3D, IMAX, in a bid to up the visual feast. It’s only been recently that – thanks to a few gems such as the Barnes Olympic Cinema – the big chains have realised that what people want is a better experience: comfy seats, couple seats, luxury food, no annoying people, and they are willing to pay top dollar for that. Steven Spielberg saw this coming years ago, and predicted a movie ticket may one day cost $500, but the experience would be amazing.

I never imagined that owning a (brand omitted) spiraliser could have turned into such an experience of sharing recipes and tips with other spiralisers. I’ve not had that much fun from my (aspirational) wristwatch. My daughter’s Smiggle watch however has given her and her friends a great experience, and her first ticket to a ‘club’.

Allow for experimentation

People have grown tired of being told what to do, or being told what not to do, or being told what is good or bad for them. The tables have turned and consumers have access to more information about your brand than you have about their secret wants and needs.

Beauty companies are among the worst offenders. Showing Gigi Hadid with your new lipstick misses the point: I know I will never look like Gigi, so what can your lipstick do for me? The same goes with sports personalities – with the bonus that a bit of exposure into doping activities may further chip away at your brand’s halo.

The days of the ‘all in one’ solution have come to pass. I know that I will not be ‘a real man’ if I drink a certain brand of beer. And I also know I will not suddenly look 20 years younger if I put a certain cream on my face. These tricks no longer work, even if ‘7 out of 8 women agree’.

 This space is where the great unsung heroes dominate. When Sony, Panasonic and Nikon were competing with the newly arrived smartphones on who could provide the most pixels, a little underdog called GoPro said ‘Who Cares’? and launched a camera that may not have the most pixels, but was small, versatile, sturdy and allowed people to easily capture and share video moments. The more its consumers experimented, the more popular the brand became.

Another little gem was the Microsoft Surface. When Apple and Google were slugging it out in the tablet market, Microsoft tried something different. A bit of a clunky hybrid with a removable keyboard, and a Bluetooth mouse and a pen, and … a whole lot of fun for consumers to experiment with. It was nice to see how quickly the other players jumped on the bandwagon.

A whole industry of Nespresso, Dolce Gusta, Juicers, Home Brews, and the likes turned everyone’s home into a little lab of trying new things and exploring the brand whilst engaging with and learning from other consumers. If there is one area where I see the sky as the limit, it is this combination of the need to experiment and share with the means to do so: think 3D printing and the internet of things …

What do you want and how can I help?

When the world turned digital, every brand wanted a piece of it. The focus for most has been on how to use digital to sell their products. The hard lesson learned is that digital has fundamentally changed what people want, in addition to how they want to engage with your brand.

So, next time when you are leering over your eCommerce, Google Analytics or Clavis data telling you how many people looked at your page or tweeted something about your brand, you could take this opportunity to dig a bit deeper to understand what people are really trying to achieve and how your brand could help with that. If you can figure that out and tell (or ask!) them in a compelling and engaging way, you’re onto a winner.